Mention the name Florence Nightingale and immediately the word nurse comes to mind. Born in 1820, Florence had the good fortune to be the daughter of wealthy parents and she grew up in England. Mr. Nightingale couldn’t find a tutor that could meet his high expectations so he decided to teach Florence and her older sister himself. She learned German, Italian, and French as well as Greek and Latin. As a result, she was able to read books on history, philosophy, and mathematics. Her love of academics coupled with her great compassion for others fitted her perfectly for, not the life of a socialite as her parents expected, but a call to what she would later refer to as, “service.”
According to John Hudson Tiner: “However, at age 17, Nightingale became convinced that God had planned something different for her. She believed she had a mission – if only she could determine what it was. Eventually, she became convinced that her special work was nursing.”1 When Florence told her parents that she wanted to become a nurse they were shocked and horrified. You see nursing back then in England was considered a very menial job and English hospitals were places of filth and degradation. In addition, nurses had the reputation of being drunkards and women of low morals.
However, to this determined woman, when God put it on her heart that her life’s mission and calling was to become a nurse, nothing was going to deter her. And when her 90 years on earth were complete, Florence Nightingale went on to become not only the most famous nurse in history but a radical medical reformer and the person who singlehandedly marked the start of nursing as a medical profession.
Her early nursing training consisted of a lot of reading on her own as well as a few months of formal training in nursing schools in Egypt and Germany. Again, Tiner adds a glimpse of how she placed everything in the Lord’s hands when he shares: “In May 1850, she wrote in her diary, ‘God, I place myself in Thy hands.’”2 When Florence returned to London she was appointed the superintendent of the Institution for Care of Sick Gentlewomen. This was an administrative position which she earned because of her extensive knowledge of health and hospital problems. This position was the beginning of her career as a medical reformer.
But the thing that really catapulted Florence to worldwide fame was the outbreak, in 1854, of the Crimean War. Florence volunteered to work in a large British hospital in Turkey. And she in addition, was put in charge of all nursing operations of the war. Conditions in this Turkish hospital were horrible. Rats ran wild, sanitation was almost nonexistent, there were hardly any medical supplies and the water was contaminated. Immediately Florence made everyone willing to listen aware of these subhuman conditions and when the London Times reported on this disgraceful situation funds began to pour in allowing Florence to make the needed changes that caused the death rate to drop by almost two-thirds.
The newspapers called her “the lady with the lamp,” because it was her habit when her administrative duties were finish to make rounds in the evening of the hospital wards with her lit lantern. Always a humble woman of God, she refused to accept the soldiers accolades but instead would say “give praise to God.” Florence went on to write several nursing textbooks and founded a nursing school in her name in London.
According to Mary Lewis Coakley: “Kings, queens, and princes all consulted her, as did the president of the United States, who wanted her advice about military hospitals during the Civil War. It was Florence Nightingale who revolutionized hospital methods in England—and indeed throughout the world. During the Crimean War, she served in the first field hospital ever run and tended by women. She established schools for training nurses, and she introduced procedures that have been benefiting people ever since. Still, this is an incomplete portrait. For years Florence acted as behind—the—scenes British secretary of war, managing to considerably better conditions for men in the armed services by setting up a system of health administration that was without precedent. Suffering, wherever it existed, challenged her. She even set up a system for extending nursing care to the poor and the criminal underworld in the slums of English cities.”3
Nursing is indeed a noble profession today thanks to the tireless efforts of Florence Nightingale. To sum up Florence’s definition of this wonderful vocation she once was quoted as saying: “Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.”4
1 John Hudson Tiner, For Those Who Dare (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, Inc. 2002), p. 187.
2 John Hudson Tiner, For Those Who Dare (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, Inc. 2002), p. 188.
3 The Faith Behind the Famous: Florence Nightingale: Christian History Sampler | Christian History Magazine (christianhistoryinstitute.org)
4 TOP 25 QUOTES BY FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (of 129) | A-Z Quotes